The American Way of Death Revisited Read Free Page B

Someone answered, “My wife.” “Are you sure you can trust her?” Gales of laughter. And: “Be sure to chitchat with your customer.” “But
our
customers don’t talk!” quipped a casket manufacturer to much hilarity.
    The rest of his speech was unexceptional, about a Motivation Study he had conducted to find out what employees value most about their jobs. He assured us that job security, wages, and fringe benefits came far down on the list. First and foremost were Appreciation, Inclusion, Being Part of a Team. “People want to be touched, loved, hugged,” said Mr. Baker. “Lots of touchy-feely! You can buy toy dinosaurs, three for 99 cents—give one to a worthy employee! Put his name in the firm newsletter! Give them balloons—people are mad for it! Invite them to a staff meeting.…”
    Our next speaker, Tom Fisher, was a man of many parts: regular feature writer for
Mortuary Management
, owner-director of a NorthDakota funeral home, and, as we learned from his opening remarks, a longtime, much admired radio and TV personality in his home state. “I’m known as Dakota Tom,” he told us.
    Speaking in the sonorous tones of his calling, he evinced a poignant nostalgia for past glories: “My vocation in funeral services began at a time when the Golden Age of this profession was coming to an end,” he said. “Funeral practitioners who brought sophistication, expansion and acceptance of mortuary services, goods, and equipment to the national marketplace were no more. With their passing, the onset of a professional menopause took place. Isolationism, self-protective insulation from outside forces—these were the attitudes encouraged by industry leadership.”
    As an Outside Force, I shifted uncomfortably in my chair at the thought of having caused a professional menopause. But Dakota Tom now launched into his major theme: the lessons he had learned from his radio and TV career. “Basically, this gave me a unique opportunity. The rewards were immeasurable in terms of experience because radio/television accorded me the chance to appreciate the full extent of the power of media image-making. Here is the point I make to you. We, as funeral directors and suppliers, have all kinds of problems on our respective plates these days, but I am here to tell you the greatest of these is based in our lack of
identity
and
image
. The public we serve—those consumers we market—aren’t buying into our programming. When we witness a high-profile funeral on television, it warms our hearts. Those occasions are not frequent enough in their occurrence to build consumer image.”
    The solution, he believes, is for funeral directors and suppliers to “scrap the present inefficient marketing methods,” pool their resources, and produce fifteen- to thirty-second commercials which “could be delivered by a respected, recognized spokesperson such as a Lloyd Bridges type.” The commercials would “affirm the personality of the industry. They should speak of memorialization, the reason for American funeral service. We could finally become the
professionals
we want to be and should be.” Ideal network programs for these commercials would be “Today,” “Good Morning America,” and “Regis and Kathie Lee”: “We should target the 18-to-25-year-olds. Remember, they are the ones who will be making arrangements for their parents. This is a passionate cause for me.…”
    His peroration: “Funeral service may be listing a bit under the strain of too much undue criticism. But I don’t think we have anyone to blame for that but ourselves. We don’t have to apologize to consumers, to critics or to anyone else.…
    “When
The American Way of Death
became a best-seller, funeral service went on a diet from which it never recovered. She was trying to tell us we should do something positive about ourselves. We have nothing to apologize for.”
    Next up, the wondrously named Enoch Glascock offered what he described as “an